Presented in support of "The Bakersfield Sound: Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and California Country," the special concert "Under Your Spell Again: The Sounds of Bakersfield” features veteran singers and songwriters who were active in the influential 1940s-1960s scene around Bakersfield, California, including Red Simpson, Gene Breeden, Dallas Frazier, Don Maddox, Rose Lee Maphis, Eugene Moles Jr., Buddy Mize, Dennis Payne, and Jean Shepard. Deke Dickerson leads the house band.

Kicking off with a duo of songs originally recorded by the two most well-known artists to come out of the area, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, the concert (recorded March 24, 2012) includes rare performances from several octogenarian singers who hadn’t been on stage in decades, including Maphis, who stopped performing when her husband and singing partner, the guitar wizard Joe Maphis, died in 1986.

“When he hung up his guitar, I did too,” Rose Lee Maphis says.

Don Maddox, who performed with his siblings as The Maddox Brothers and Rose, turned to ranching not long after that family band split in the mid-fifties. “This song is from my latest release,” he jokes during the concert. “My latest release was in the 1950s.”

Each artist relates stories of the collaborative atmosphere of the Bakersfield music community; the musicians regularly performed in the band at each other’s shows, and toured together, recorded each other’s songs, and produced each other’s records.

Red Simpson delivers a mini-set of his truck-driving hits, along with “Sam’s Place,” a song he wrote that was a #1 hit for Buck Owens. The entire cast joins in to close with Haggard’s “Honky Tonk Night Time Man.”

The exhibition “The Bakersfield Sound: Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and California Country” was featured at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum from March 24, 2012 through December 31, 2014.

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